Black Ops 2 Innovates with League Play and COD Casting

eSports: Call of Duty Black Ops 2 is set to introduce a brand new feature called eSports. It seems Treyarch has listened to the community and will be introducing eSports into the game, again this is a first in any Call of Duty game. The eSports feature is spilt up into 3 unique features “League Play, CODcast and Live Streaming”, all the unique features that make up eSports and what it is all about. David Vonderhaar stated “Sport and eSport is no difference, you have a sport, a production, a personality and a caster”.

League Play: Treyarch has introduced brand new Call of Duty leagues with Black Ops 2 which involve seasonal ladders on skill based matchmaking making “Competition fun at any level”. A team can come together and play games to earn skill rating of which they will always move up a league and get into a new division. Treyarch wanted the matchmaking to be set on skill based level to ensure everyone is having fun all the time, they believed winning by a huge amount and losing by a huge amount all the time is not fun in the slightest, so they introduced skill based matchmaking so a team only play opponents on a similar skill level to have a fun and very fair/even game. If you are on Twitter and follow @DavidVonderhaar you will have seen his Twitter picture over the past few days quite a lot, all these little emblems are of which the different division emblems will be.

CODcast: CODcasting in a brand new way of spectating a game of Call of Duty. Essentially the “CODcaster” takes on the role of the commentator of the game, providing the audience with coverage and details of what is going on within the game. Within CODcasting are a few very specific features to allow shouting like never before.

–Picture-In-Picture: This certain view shows a table of all players in that game, along with their current score, kill streak and their status. The amazing thing about this view is that a players status is what they are doing with the game such as, Capturing the C Flag on Domination, Planting the bomb at A on Search and Destroy or even gaining points of the HQ on Headquarters, all of which are unique to this view.

–Map View: This view shows a bird eyes view of the map they are playing, and shows where the players are running using the arrows to represent players much like we have seen on previous game.

–Score Panel: Very similar to what is already part of eSports is a big score players clearly showing who is winning the game and what score by, it also shows objective information for example, how long a bomb has left to be defused.

–Name Plate: Treyarch added this cool feature in Black Ops 2 and it acts as a players jersey meaning that the audience can easily identify who they are spectating.

–Display Options: The CODcaster has the ability to switch on and off certain sections of a players HUD when they are spectating a certain player. This will not affect the players HUD but will optimize the audiences spectating experience.

–Listen In: Allows the spectator to drop in and out of a team conversation and what they are saying.

Livestreaming: Currently in development is Livestreaming which will help make competitive gaming not only fun to play but also fun to watch. Treyarch will enable a streaming toolset that allows players to stream their own gameplays once the Livestreaming option is complete. Not only can you stream your gameplay but if you want to commentate the game you can plug in an additional USB webcam for the world to see your face also in the stream.